The Future of Journalism Will Be Radically Different
An Interview with Spot.us about the changing nature of journalism.
These days, everywhere you look it seems that some newspaper is closing its doors, stopping its presses, or maybe just going online-only. This sea of change is being heralded by some as the "death of journalism," a transformation that has been brought about thanks to the web. But is the web really killing journalism? Or, is it allowing an entirely new type of journalism to emerge?
David Cohn would probably argue it's the latter. For five months now, his crowd-funded journalism project at Spot.us has been providing the means for local reporters to get paid while researching the stories the community wants to read.
At last week's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, we had an opportunity to sit down with David and ask him about the project, what's been happening with it, and where he sees it going.
The "Death of Journalism?" Not so fast. We would say that the internet is leading us to the future instead.
About Spot.us
Spot.us is a non-profit startup which distributes the cost of hiring a journalist across a community of people. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, Spot.us has already funded stories where journalists have investigated things like the local police department, poverty issues, and city budgetary issues.
After a story is funded and the final copy is turned in, Spot.us will try to sell the first publishing rights. If that happens, then any money they make goes back to the original donors so they can reinvest in another story. If Spot.us is not able to sell the first publishing rights, they will then release the story under Creative Commons so anyone can publish it.
Spot.us is currently funded through a grant, but they also ask the community to donate an additional $2 when funding a particular story. This money goes to the organization itself and will hopefully allow it to expand to other cities. But, if you don't want to wait for Spot.us to come to your town, you can start your own version instead. The Spot.us code is open source, so you could launch a site like this for your own community.
In the end, what David Cohn hopes to prove is that, indeed, "journalism will survive the death of its institutions." With Spot.us, he shows us that there is another way to keep the industry alive, even after the papers fail.
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Well, this is a really good project, but I'm not sure they can finance themselves and expand with such a donations Business model, and about selling the story, if people find out they can get the story for free some day later, they may some time start speculation and and wait for the story to go public under CC-licence before republishing it. It's a very good Idea but they should try to partner with some Major or local Newspapers.
This is a good project. I hope costs will be lesser.
This is a fine model, as far as it goes, for local reporting. But what about stories with state impact? What about national/world impact? What about long-form, investigative reporting, where the story may take days, and even weeks of reporting before the whole story becomes real?
Who pays for the reporter's extended time, and phone calls, and internet access, and even travel to make these stories possible? As a working journalist, I need some hard answers to these questions, so I can figure out if I can pay my mortgage and buy food, and continue to have some sort of reasonable lifestyle while all this "transition" takes its merry time to figure out.
Please, try to understand that a lot of this is why veteran reporters and editors like me are extremely skeptical about overly-optomistic schemes, while our livelihoods are being yanked out from under us. Thanks.
To the commenter above.
Spot.Us never claims to be a silver bullet - but we are actually trying to look at the very concerns you discuss but at a local level.
I know local investigations are less sexy - but they are just as important as investigations as the state level and national level.
Also - our code is open source, so somebody could take it and start a national or state version of it.
Overly optimistic: No, as I said - this is no "silver bullet." But there is potential here and I am eager to see what happens. Something new must be tried.
So, it looks like the HuffPo is bankrolling an investigative journalism fund now (hmmmmm, which way will it slant?). How long until Fox News launches their own "fair and balanced" investigative journalism fund?Heads up, here comes the pro-life investigative journalism fund and right behind it the treehugger's...
Welcome to the age of Special Interest Journalism 1.0
@Max,
Man your absolutely right it's very hard for journalist right now. I work some top notch journalists and we're trying to re-invent the way we view and create content. It's really challenging but we're finding answers together. We keep trying to understand how to co-create content with our community instead of for them. I know my answer won't bring home the bacon, and I have seen many overly optimistic schemes fail, but I hope that folks the folks @ spot.us are hinting at something positive to come.
I agree 100 percent with you that journalism is certainly changing, if I'm understanding Spot.ca right they pay the freelancer for their research and story after it's been sold. I'm not sure I'd want to do that much work to have someone else get it published and share in the profit. Not to sound selfish but the hardest part of journalism is gathering the information, sorting through the facts and writing a powerful enough article for people to want to read.
A person with those abilities should also be able to find sources to want to buy their peice where they will earn back the cost and time of research.
With the mass restructuring standard news media will be going through, this is a great time for freelancers to jump on the bandwagon and show their true potential.
Just a thought from a fellow freelancer.
my apologies for mistake of Spot.ca ---correction Spot.us
Wow dude that makes pretty good sense!
RT
www.anon-tools.cz.tc
The news transition reminds me of my industry transition: the defense industry at the end of the Cold War. It was obvious to everyone in our company that the DoD work was going to cut 'way back. So, during the informational meetings with the execs, we'd ask: what's your plan for a transition to commercial work? What can we do to help?
The answer was that there was no plan, that they didn't feel the company's structure was a good fit to a transition. Ergo (and unsaid), the commercial transition would be at the individual level, as employees left to seek or create new business opportunities.
I think this is going to be the situation for the news media. Fortunately for individual news writers and copy editors, I think there are other jobs they can transition their skills to, painful though that process may be
Unfortunately, there aren't any well thought out plans for how news will subsequently be collected and disseminated. It will occur ad hoc, and it won't be pretty. In the meantime, people will just be less informed, with all that implies.
@Amanda
You have the system down a little wrong. We pay the reporters after they've written the story. But we already have money guaranteed for them - that would be the money we raised from community members.
We also try and make money selling the story - which goes back to the community members. So the donors aren't necc. going to get their money back - but either way the reporter is paid whatever money we raise.
The future of journalism depends on the social news media direction, trends are rapidly changing. One solution is to re-direct their strategies to other areas to promote their skills to higher levels. At determined2.com Interactivity that promotes successful pursuit of life goals. Working on goals is a solution to making changes, giving you other options to advance your skills and potential.
@Max: It is most likely that the model proposed and acted out by spot.us will not function as needed, but it is the nature of the web-based concern to morph into what the community needs and wants or pass away.
Consider this: with the global village being what it is - with jailed bloggers using phones to tweet their friends, and further back during the Yugoslav wars citizen journalists providing the world with the first "real" look at the face of the front, bypassing traditional media completely and irrevocably - I have to think that your concern regarding global-/world-impacting news is largely irrelevant in the long term.
As I see it, everywhere is local to some reporter, and if no reporter is present, a citizen will be.
Interesting! I wonder why they decided to make it non-profit. I think the public would support it as for-profit, too.
Posted by: Dawn
|
April 10, 2009 9:49 AM
Does The Internet 'Hurt Journalism?'
A new poll of 43 of America's fanciest "Media Insiders"
reveals this: two thirds(!) of them think the internet hurts
journalism more than it helps.
http://gawker.com/5206780/does-the-internet-hurt-journalism
Thanks for posting this interview. It's definitely interesting.
I love what spot.us are doing - so good to see quality journalism rallying, even when teh traditional structures that supported it are dying.
My 2 cents on how young journos can prepare themselves at http://platform.idiomag.com/2009/04/you-want-to-be-a-journalist/
Very interesting how you discussed the way in which Journalistic Integrity has become compromised. I have recently written an article about this very subject and i was wondering how you think the free market plays into this? the need to make money by giving their viewers what they want, instead of what they need!
my article can be found here http://theobserverpodcast.com/?p=134
Very few publication are able to live upto the high standard of Journalism. The publication which gives news with unbiased views will only be able to make difference in long run.